Page 86 - Winterling's Chasing the Wind

CHAPTER 24 - Tallahassee and Jacksonville Connections
After the winter term, we began driving to Jacksonville where we stayed at my in-law's
house. Our Jacksonville church paid me $25 to clean the buildings on Saturday. On
Sundays, I would play the piano if a real pianist was not available. In the summer of
1956, I went to a dentist in Tallahassee for a cyst on the roof of my mouth. He referred
me to a dental surgeon, Dr. Fred Mann, who discovered the cyst was caused by an
abscess from an infected tooth. Testing the tooth with an electric current proved the
tooth to be dead. The tooth was probably injured when I tumbled off my bicycle in
1945. I had a root canal placed inside the tooth, and the cyst was removed in the new
Baptist Hospital that had just opened a year earlier.

After recuperation at my in-law's house in Jacksonville, I finally rejoined Virginia in
Tallahassee. A few months later, Virginia learned she was pregnant. I remember when
we went to the County Fair that fall; we observed a chart that displayed the
development of a baby month by month in the womb. After spending Christmas at her
parent’s house, we decided that she should quit her job at Tallahassee Memorial and
live with them until the baby came in May. Fortunately, I didn’t have to drive to and
from Jacksonville each weekend. My classmate, Windell Dixon, visited his parent’s
house a few blocks away each weekend. I would ride with him to Jacksonville on
Friday afternoons, and ride back to Tallahassee early Monday morning in time for our 9
AM class. This was before Interstate 10. We traveled on the old US 90 two-lane road.
There were frequently patches of dense fog in the dips between the hills on the road. It
was a beneficial learning experience for us observe firsthand the way fog developed.

During my senior year at Florida State, I spotted an advertisement on the bulletin board
on the first floor of the Meteorology building (which was a two-story house that the
university had bought). It advertised jobs for meteorologists at WTVT Channel 13 in
Tampa. At the time I had no interest in one at a TV station. I preferred the weather
station type workplace which was similar to my experience in the Air Force.

Virginia, four months pregnant with our first child, left her job at Tallahassee Memorial
hospital to live with her parents in Jacksonville. I stayed in Tallahassee for my last
semester exchanging our two bedroom apartment for a single room in a house on St.
Augustine Street. A close classmate let me use his kitchen to warm things like soup and

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